Last month it was revealed that the Pubs Independent Conciliation and Arbitration (PICA)-Service ruled against Star Pubs & Bars for failing to ensure that two former tenants had taken professional advice before submitting a business plan.
Jowsey said he was “disappointed” to have lost the case against Martyn and Patricia Turner, former tenants of the Old Bridge House in Blackpool, but pointed out that the case is two years old.
“I think the industry, and Star Pubs, has moved on significantly in the last two years in a positive way. Whilst it’s disappointing to make a mistake, which we did, I guess I’d be really confident to say we’ve learnt from a lot of these mistakes in the past and I think we’ve really put our house in order.”
The PICAS panel did not find, from the evidence presented, that Star had committed any other technical breaches or breaches in the spirit of the Code of Practice.
Jowsey added: “In most parts of that case we not only complied with the letter of the code but the spirit of it. We’ve always tried to go beyond the letter of the law, try and do what we think is right rather than being told what we’ve got to do.
“In this one particular instance, where we didn’t get any proof that [the tenants] had taken independent financial advice, we made a mistake. I don’t believe we’d make that mistake now, I genuinely don’t. I think our processes and our procedures are much more rigorous, as it everybody’s.”
He criticised current plans by the Government for a statutory code for larger tenanted pub companies, saying that it “tries to legislate for something that’s in the past rather than where we are now, or where we’re going, which I don’t find really provides an awful lot of value”.